feral

Note: On this site, feral is a technical body-plan and character-status tag, not a description of temperament. It does not mean wild, untamed, or uncivilized in the everyday sense of the word — a feral character can be fully civilized, articulate, and domestic. If you're looking to describe a character's temperament as wild or untamed (e.g. a Tarzan-style character), consider wild or uncivilized instead — those tags cover behavior, not this one.

Definition

Feral refers to fictional characters with a fully animal-like body plan — quadrupedal or otherwise non-humanoid — who are written as sapient, individual characters rather than ordinary animals. The key requirement is sapience and independent character agency: personality, narrative role, or the capacity to act and be understood as an individual, not merely an animal-shaped body and not merely having a name.

This tag exists to separate character-status animal-bodied creatures from ordinary animals. It does not describe intelligence level, wildness, or civilization on its own — a feral character can be fully sapient, speaking, and civilized; what matters is that the card treats them as a sapient individual character rather than background wildlife or a generic pet.

Usage

Apply this tag to animal-bodied characters written as sapient individuals — with personality, agency, or a defined narrative role of their own — regardless of body plan realism. This includes pokemon, my_little_pony characters, talking-animal characters, and other animal-bodied creatures written as sapient individuals.

This tag describes character form and status, not behavior or setting. A feral character does not need to be wild, aggressive, or uncivilized.

Do not apply this tag to ordinary animals with no sapience or independent personality, even if the animal has a name. A named but ordinary pet (e.g. "Rex the family dog") without individual agency or personality of its own is still animal, not feral. Naming alone does not establish character status.

Do not apply this tag to humanoid animal characters. Use furry, anthropomorphic, or kemonomimi where appropriate.

This tag does not imply zoophilia. A feral character's presence in a card, sexual or otherwise, does not by itself determine scenario tagging — see zoophilia for how sexual scenarios involving feral characters are categorized.

Related tags include animal for ordinary, undefined-identity creatures, monster for fictional non-animal creatures, and furry for humanoid animal characters.